I wrote a guest column for the Daily Sun about my personal experiences and realizations in the wake of the controversial April Fools Day post that used and abused Asian stereotypes. Check it out. (They couldn’t put it in the print edition because they were overloaded with senior goodbyes, but I will try to get it posted in the fall when they resume publication.)
If you haven’t already, go check out “My Night with Jenna B.” It’s written by this dude who totally banged Jenna B and apparently she totally pulled the downward-head-push on HIM and she totally was only a 5.75 outta 10 in the BJ department….
But we want to know: who is the author, the so-called “Cunnilingus Cowboy”? The Sun provides these little hints at the bottom of the story:
The ‘Cunnilingus Cowboy’ is a senior. The Sun granted him pseudonymity to protect his identity, but has verified, to the best of its ability, the facts of the article. The article is printed with Jenna B.’s permission.
Pseudonymity? Fuck that shit. We faithful readers want answers.
After the break: a poorly thought out theories of mine as to who this disrespec’in’ cowboy is.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a piece I wrote for the 4/16 edition of Bully Pulpit, a political publication on-campus that solicited an explanation of the controversial April Fools’ Day post and its aftermath. It contains an editor’s note (written by Everet Yi) at the bottom, which is reproduced below.
On April 1, I decided to post a Onion-style fake news piece titled “Asian Community Center to be Built Adjacent to Uris Library” on CornellWatch (blogs.kitschmag.com/watch), a blog about current events on campus. I figured it was April Fools’ Day, and that making light of stereotypes might somehow be more acceptable. The center was big news yesterday, and seemed like something that could stand up to some misguided lampooning. In any case, it was “satire,” right?
Wrong. Exactly a week later, some members of the Asian community, specifically those invested in the planning of the community center, found out about the post. Understandably, they didn’t think jokes about their status as the so-called “model minority” were very funny, and my initial response to them was basically: okay, I’m sorry that you’re offended and all, but you’re really reading way too much into this. After all, it was just a joke—a very crass, fell-flat-on-its-face type of joke—and as such, the viewpoints were not ones that I personally hold.
I hastily drew up a new post entitled “An Open Apology for a Bad Joke” and removed the offending April Fools’ post. I explained that I felt their pain and understood that the model minority stereotype is “the reason for the unrealistic academic pressure that Asian and Asian-American students face and likely the reason that they commit a disproportionate amount of Cornell’s suicides.”
Those shards of glass threatening to rip my journalistic credibility to threads were magically swept on the carpet—I was saved, right?
Wrong again. Riding the blogosphere train, commenters swarmed in on and tore apart my poorly constructed and ill-conceived apology. I was described as “a racist, pure and simple,” “some idiot college columnist [trying] to increase his… street cred,” and ultimately “a part of the problem.” Some intrepid internet vigilante even created a blog for me, reposting my initial entry and my “bullshit apology” below an image of two Ku Klux Klan members.
I have to admit that this was a scary situation for me, but that ultimately it is one that I am glad to have experienced. I met with concerned members of the Asian and Asian-American Center (A3C) and was educated as to the specifics of what angered and worried them about my post. I learned that in writing that post, I really was part of the problem—a problem that a 2004 task force reported as the “perceived lack of recognition and awareness of the reality, experience, and impact of racism and stereotyping as they relate to Asians and Asian Americans.”
I also have learned that I should not be one to speak or make assumptions about sensitive issues such as suicide or the model minority stereotype before I had done an appreciable amount of research; that the situation needs to be amended instead of defended; and that a more robust “meta-apology” of sorts should be issued. Hopefully before next Friday, I will be publishing this more comprehensive apology in the Daily Sun.
Once again—this time in light of more knowledge and less ignorance—I apologize for using racist stereotypes in a way that ridiculed the entire Asian and Asian-American community. I am hopeful that I am on the road to opening a dialogue on-campus about this issue, because, unfortunately, the belief and misuse of these stereotypes is altogether common—and fairly socially acceptable—on the Cornell campus. Please send suggestions and questions about the situation to watch@kitschmag.com.
Editor’s Note: We commend D. Evan Mulvilhill for starting an important dialogue across the Cornell campus. We condemn the commenters who have called Evan a cunt, racist, and a bigot.
We appreciate Evan’s use of humor to highlight the various stereotypes facing Asian and Asian American’s today. After all, if we don’t talk about it, nothing is going to get accomplished.
Without humor and dialogue, the world would be a sad place.
So, thank you Evan. Thanks for being brave by putting yourself out there by starting an important discussion regarding stereotypes concerning the APIA community.
P.S. Everyone calling for Evan’s head, CALM DOWN. Sheesh.
One week and a day ago, I decided to write an April Fools’ Day, fake news-style post titled “Asian Community Center to be Built Adjacent to Library.” Earlier today, I removed the post because of a large amount of negative feedback.
The day or two before I wrote the post, there was a forum hosted to dicuss the plans for an Asian Community Center, which the S.A. had approved in November. The article’s central joke was that the center would be built next to the library so students could study more easily; this played up the “model minority” stereotype that Asians tend to work harder academically as a whole. While I’m not saying that the stereotype is completely unfounded, I think that it is the reason for the unrealistic academic pressure that Asian and Asian-American students face and likely the reason that they commit a disproportionate amount of Cornell’s suicides.
The rest of the post included myriad stereotypes about Asians: bubble tea, mispronounciation of Rs and Ls, you name it… In being over-the-top with layering on the stereotypes, I thought I could pull off an Onion-style article but it seems, as one commenter noted, that I went in the direction of Carlos Mencia.
In looking at articles on the Onion about Asian-Americans, I found that their angle focused on Asians who decided consciously to defy the stereotypes of being hard-working academic overachievers. This is probably the more tasteful way of addressing the situation, and ultimately the funnier one.
Some commenters seemed to think that I was some mega-racist or the epitome of what the Asian-American community needs to be afraid of. Neither is true: in the end, this was all just a bad, crass joke. So here I am, tail between my legs and offering the offended parties my sincerest apologies.
Sincerely,
D. Evan Mulvihill
EDIT: Comments were closed because I felt they exhausted the spectrum of responses. If you have something new to add, please email watch@kitschmag.com. (A further statement on this situation will be made in the coming days.)
EDIT#2: Comments are again open–but I will not hesitate to delete comments that are mean, hateful, or less than three words. (I’ll leave the existing hate comments for posterity.) After meeting with representatives of the Asian and Asian American Community Center (A3C), I am in the process of writing a longer and more comprehensive meta-apology-cum-personal-narrative that should hopefully be published in the Daily Sun before next Friday. As part of this process, I will be reposting the original offending April Fools’ Day blog in its original form. The only update will be a link to this apology and the acknowledgment of the Sun column-to-come.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This entry was originally posted on April 1st as an April Fools’ Day joke. An apology was issued one week later and the post removed in response to a large amount of negative feedback, but it was, as I explain in this later piece published in an campus political publication, a sorry excuse for a real apology. As part of owning up to my mistakes in a more sincere way, I have reposted the offending piece in full and published a “meta-apology” in the online version of the Daily Sun.
President David Skorton announced the plans for the construction of an Asian Community Center at a midday press conference today. The building is to be located directly adjacent to Uris Library on the Clocktower Side, and will be designed by the famous architect I. M. Pei.
“I believe that this building will dramatically reduce the amount of Asian suicides at Cornell,” Skorton announced. “We also plan to fill in the gorges with those chewy bubble tea orbs so that distraught students will have to rely on other methods.”
Among the center’s many features are the Pokemon Card Trading Arena, the Mi-So Slipi Lounge equipped with 100 beds for study break naps, and one-seater dining areas with calculators built into the tables. Many students are most excited, however, about the center’s Lucky Sun Moon Restaurant, which features MSG, beef with broccoli, and cat-fish casserole, which incorporates not catfish but a mixture of cat and flounder.
“Our plans were substantially modified after meeting with the Asian and Asian-American community,” said architect I. M. Pei. “The original plans called for an underground parking lot, but it was scrapped based on the projected amount of parking mishaps. That was something I did not foresee, perhaps because of my squinty eyes.”
Most Asian students jumped for joy upon hearing the news. Student Mi-So Honee remarked, “Is so close to libelly!”
Other students were appreciative that the name was changed from the Little Rice Room Place. “Besides being a sirry name, I couldn’t rearry pronounce arr those R and Ls,” said Henry Joon-Kimyung-Jook.
ED’S NOTE: I’m not really this lacist… but then, again maybe everyone is:
If you hadn’t heard about JuicyCampus.com before now, then I am glad to supply the gossip sewer with a few more chortling rats. If you have, chances are you have also heard the insistent cries for its prohibition.
Among them is current S.A. president C. J. Slicklen ’09, who was quoted in the hyperlinked article as saying, “If we don’t get on there it will die.” Ironic that the supplier of such a news byte is in fact the most “on there” of any Cornell student, being the titular topic of the “Most Discussed” post (45 as of now) on our personal Juicy satellite.
The body of the post reads:
“HAS THE BIGGEST PENIS I´VE EVER SEEN!!! and he gives AMAZING oral. i´m not even fucking kidding, this guy is unbelievable…
i had to let the cat out of the bag.”
A riotous discussion ensued, with such gems as “IM GONNA CALL BULLSIHT,,TRIED TO HAVE 3SOME W HIM BEFORE HE FREAKED OUT AND LEFT ROOM…….PUSSY” and “one time at CTB i saw [former S.A. president] Elan crawling on his hands and knees with a ball gag and a dog mask…and CJ was holding the leash!!”
With nearly 5,000 views, it is less surprising that two of the replies mentioned that they overheard coeds actually gossiping out loud in Libe and in Trillium about this specific post, which makes me conclude: all the JuicyCampus-is-evil rhetoric of the S.A. and Class Councils will only further popularize the site: Juicy wants any and all publicity, good or bad.
What’ll happen in the coming months? Vince Hartman, President of the Class of 2008, told me that he believes JuicyCampus may cause slandered students to commit suicide. It’s a stretch, but maybe—and if it does, the law will probably act. Unfortunately, it will probably take a gossipee’s plummet to gorge bottom to stop the sensationalist site, but until then… gossip on, impending trainwreck!
CornellWatch